ABSTRACT
The manner in which the social and economic history of Western Europe has been told here is open to the obvious charge of inhumanity. I may have demonstrated how the European economy succeeded in growing faster than ever before and how at the same time profound changes took place in industrial ownership and employment and perhaps also in social relations. But I have said little about the difference which economic growth and its attendant social changes made – or failed to make – in the condition of persons. Did a larger product per head in fact bring greater material bounty to humble men and women? And if it were shown that this is in fact what higher national outputs brought about, it would not necessarily follow that they also resulted in corresponding increases of welfare. As for social changes, how much did it matter to the well-being of the vast majority of men that industries were now differently owned and administered, or that distinctions of rank were now more gently graded, or that the numbers of skilled and better-trained employees had grown?
